VEGAS INC coverage

The Nevada Taxicab Authority on Tuesday approved up to 80 additional cabs on city streets for the weekend of the Manny Pacquiao-Shane Mosely boxing match at the MGM Grand.

It’s the first time the five-member board that regulates Clark County’s taxi industry has allocated additional cabs for a fight night. Frias Cab Co. made the request to add up to five more cabs May 6-8 for each of the 16 companies operating in the county.

The board was swayed by the argument that the fight is running the same night as the Monster Energy Supercross motorcycle event at Sam Boyd Stadium and that additional cabs would be needed to accommodate crowds at both events.

The typical allocation battle lines were in place for the decision. Taxi company owners uniformly backed the request, but unions representing cab drivers opposed it. In most allocation requests, company owners view placing additional cabs in the field as an opportunity to generate more revenue while drivers see it as each driver making less money, because they have to split the number of rides generated more ways and the traffic tends to result in fewer rides per cab.

Neal Tomlinson, a lawyer representing Frias, told the board that while the MGM Grand Garden Arena would seat about 18,000 people, Pacquiao has a loyal following and that more people would be expected in town for the fight.

But Chaz Rainey, representing the Industrial Technical Professional Employees union, called it “a nonsensical request” and said most fight fans either would have their own vehicles in town or would stay in hotels close enough to the MGM to walk to the venue. He added that approving the allocation request would set a bad precedent.

George Balaban, who heads Desert Cab Co., said the request for additional cabs wasn’t just about fight night and that fans in town for the fight or the Supercross event would need rides to restaurants and other locations during their stay in Las Vegas.

The Taxicab Authority staff, however, noted that most of the major hotels along the Strip aren’t booked to capacity yet and the fight is just over a week away.

The authority board also approved in a 3-1 vote an allocation of up to 80 additional cabs — five per company — from May 8-12 for four conventions that would have total attendance close to 65,000 people.

Authority board member Joe Hardy was unconvinced that there was a need for additional cabs during the shows and voted against the allocation.

In other business, the board discussed submitting legislation that would increase the fine for long-hauling, the illegal practice of a cab driver taking a passenger a longer route to a destination without permission.

Current penalties include a fine of up to $100 for a first offense, $200 anda three-day suspension for the second, $300 and a six-day suspension for a third and $500 and a license revocation for a fourth.

Some cab companies have more severe penalties if they catch their drivers long-hauling customers.

Cab company owners suggested increasing the fine to $500 for the first offense.

But some drivers have maintained that they are under pressure to increase fare revenue because of quotas established by cab companies and are driven to long-haul customers to reach those amounts.

Knowing that it’s too late in this year’s legislative process for the Taxicab Authority to have higher fines set by law, the board agreed to assign the task to its new administrator, Charles Harvey, who won’t begin his new job until May 9.

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The taxi authority and and state of Nevada could stiffle all this dissention between cab drivers and the taxi authority and cab owners who are gifted thier medallions and license to operate if the state lifted its laws on excluding taxi drivers from making minimum wage including overtime for more than 8 hours in one day or 40 hours in one week. Singleing out one segment of working Nevada citizens to be exploited by thier companies flies in the face of what wage rights is all about. That other buisnesses in Nevada ignore the fact that this one business group has successfully lobbied to have thier workers excluded from minimum wage laws is so exploitative that it only encourages cab co owners to perpetually want more cabs ... and any excuse will do! It also highlights the issue of business having excessive and undue influence over politicians and how they do or don't proctect the rights of its citizens, one might even go so far as to imagine that a deal was struck between the politicians who enacted the legislation to exclude cab drivers from minimum wage protections as being partners sharing in the extra revenue in the form of political campaign contributions from cab companies from the increased revenue by excluding cab drivers from minimum wage protections.